Chapter 14: Motivation

Tuesday, Twenty-fourth December, 2019

CHRISTMAS EVE

08.07GMT It was twenty-one hours since Ali and Kate had been abducted and we had heard nothing from them or from their kidnapper. Officially it was another three quarters of an hour before the sun would rise but there was almost total cloud cover so it was unlikely that we would notice the event. Daylight was at six thirty, according to the almanac but it had been after seven before the light was good enough to distinguish objects with sufficient clarity.

Detective Constable Con Forsyth told us that the first of the search flights took off at seven and that the air armada was now fully launched. You could tell that he expected good news at any second but the rest of us were subdued, as if we were reluctant to hope too much. Rachel had gone along the corridor from the bathroom to the other wing of the house to check on Doh. He was still sleeping but Jon was awake, and Jenny was cradling him in her arms while he sobbed.

I went downstairs where Elaine was swearing at the coffee machine. I sent her into the kitchen to put the kettle on to boil while I got a brew started. Heather and Eddie arrived moments later and set to work preparing breakfast. Dandy had gone off half an hour before to take a look at the flock. His actions made the situation more normal – and, somehow, more endurable; the animals still had to be cared for despite the chaos in the lives of human beings.

I had poured a cup of coffee for Elaine and another for myself when my phone rang with an unknown caller on the line. It was an academic from Durham University who was one of a number of people who were planning to spend the day scanning satellite images of Scotland, looking for the missing seaplane.

“There was a satellite image waiting for me this morning,” he began. “It’s from a guy in Bangalore in India that I’ve dealt with before. He’s a bit strange, to tell you the truth, but he spots things from time to time. Anyway, I’ll send you the image and a copy of his message and you can decide for yourself. One of my guys is checking it out and I’ll let you know if anything shows up.”

I ran upstairs to the office and opened the email from Durham going straight to the image of an anonymous hill about a third covered in snow. An arrow on the print focused attention on a spot low on the left of the picture but I could see nothing. The message from the Indian scientist said that there were two parallel lines visible that appeared to extend for about thirty metres. There was a magnifying glass in the desk drawer but, even with that, I was unable to see the lines.

Con was hovering in the porch, and he took me to Cabin 1 where he had a higher definition printer than the one in the office. We reprinted the picture from Bangalore, and I was finally able to see the parallel lines in the snow; I must acknowledge that Con was not convinced that there was anything to see.

We agreed to say nothing until the team from Durham had checked the sighting. He called me back at 08.48 with the news that they had scrutinised the images from six satellites without being able to find the mystery lines.

“That doesn’t mean there was nothing there. If these were shallow tracks they might only show for an instant when the sun was in a particular spot to throw a shadow. Then again, the snow would have filled in shallow depressions very quickly in even the gentlest breeze.

“My best guess is that it’s nothing,” he concluded, in answer to my question.

Doh tracked me down and I spent half an hour persuading Jim Maitland that my son could join one of the search helicopters. I do not believe he would have agreed but Doctor Iain was planning a visit to see his patient, so there was no need to divert a precious search plane. Con became rather morose that he was not allowed to join the search parties, but I convinced him that his role as squire des dames was invaluable. It was true that all the women liked and trusted the young detective.

It was certainly true that he had taken a great weight off my shoulders. I was doing a great deal of worrying on my own behalf and I had been finding it difficult to maintain an optimistic front for the sake of the others. Elaine was looking tired and accepted my suggestion that she have a lie-down after breakfast. Jenny and Rachel were cooperating in the care of Jon. He was still highly sedated, but he was no longer totally comatose.

I felt like the biblical prophet without honour in his own country: the ladies listened with more respect to the opinions of Con, hardly old enough to tie his own bootlaces, than they did to my prognostications. Looking back, I can now admit that they probably made the right judgement.

Doctor Iain was expected at about nine-thirty but until then the ladies had to deal with Jon’s increasingly querulous questions. He wanted to be told that all was well, and he became really agitated at any suggestion that there could be obstacles or even delays. I was struggling to remain sympathetic, despite knowing all I did about the circumstances of his life. He is twenty-three and should be man enough to face problems. I found myself contrasting his behaviour with that of my fourteen-year-old son.

Con had just told us that Iain’s helicopter was five minutes away when I received the royal command to attend on Jon in his room. Only Jenny was there fussing over the invalid, because Rachel had gone to supervise the preparations for Doh to join the search parties. Jon began by apologising that he was so little use to us, but he soon became critical of the way the police were handling the whole abduction. I had misgivings of my own, but I put up a vigorous defence of Jim Maitland.

“Well, I don’t know,” he whined. “I think they could be doing more and if not them then somebody. What are you doing to get Kate back, Fergus?”

That caught a raw nerve, and I jumped to my feet, striding out the room too angry to risk speaking. Jenny started after me, but Jon deflected her by asking, tearfully, if he had upset me. I went downstairs while he was telling her that he would not upset me for the world and asking her what he had done to annoy me. I felt as if I had thrashed a new puppy for having a small accident with his bladder.

The helicopter had landed while I was with Jon, so I exchanged greetings with Doctor Iain before he rushed upstairs to his patient and I stood outside with my mind seething. I realised almost at once that I was angry not with Jon but with myself. I had done nothing but create trouble for people since I first set foot in the Retreat. Kate and Jon had been happy enough playing their music for a handful of friends.

Now I have cruelly exposed their lack of commercial talent, destroying their happiness to no purpose. I acknowledge that I was tricked into taking them past the site of the accident, but I had wormed my way into their confidence, otherwise they would never have trusted me to drive them there. They had gained nothing from the anguish I put them through.

Anya had adjusted to her life on Loch Dochard until I came along and seduced her; having raised her expectations, I did nothing to protect her from Rob who, it is now plain, is a stalker. Anya’s new engagement with the wider world had unbalanced Rob to the point where he had reasoned that abducting innocent children was a solution to his problems.

Then I was slow to recognise the shortcomings in Bill as the father of intelligent teenagers. I should have pushed harder to maintain my contact with my kids and ex-wife. If she had known me a little better, Ali would have felt secure even if Kate was treating me as a father figure. Doh would have known me well enough to be sure that I loved him just as much as I love his sister.

My behaviour over Jenny and Rachel has been nothing short of disgusting. I promoted Jenny’s career, giving her reason to think I was interested but then threw her to Piers, a known wolf. Even last night I was prepared to take strength and comfort from holding her hand only to find myself mere hours later, fondling my wife’s breast.

Last but not least by a very long way, I have sat on my hands for almost twenty-four hours while my daughter and my friend are exposed to God alone knows what kind of danger. It is a total dereliction of my duty of care to leave everything to the police, especially when I am more than half convinced that Jon is right. Instead of thinking and scheming I need to be actually doing something.

Doctor Iain came downstairs and I could hear him talking to Elaine.

“Jenny’s been getting him to drink a little and he doesn’t need food for a day or two yet, so I’ve knocked him out again. He’s not doing himself any good by lying there fretting. She looks washed out, but she says she needs a long soak in a hot tub more than a sleep. You go and run a bath now – he’ll be sound asleep by the time it’s ready.”

He came out the door and brushed past me before he went forward to put his arm around Doh’s shoulders to lead him to the helicopter. I think it may have been the sight of my fourteen-year-old son doing his bit; something snapped, and I found myself rushing to catch up, hoisting myself into the chopper as they boarded.

“Drop me at Loch Dochard,” I told the pilot.

10.55GMT I could hear Rachel calling my name, but that was soon drowned out as the engines fired up. The pilot gestured towards me and Iain handed me a pair of earphones and showed me how to switch from send to receive.

“I don’t even know who you are,” the pilot said, in a conversational tone. “But unless you’re a hijacker, I can’t just take you where you want. You’re not a hijacker, are you? I just thought it might be habitual behaviour in this God-forsaken spot.”

“Shouldn’t you be checking that old Hector’s coping with all this excitement?” I asked, ignoring the irony and turning to Iain.

We were now off the ground and moving slowly south along the spine of the Rosneath peninsula. The pilot had turned back to his controls, happy enough to leave me as a problem for the Doctor, who was looking intently at me, with his eyebrows raised.

“I could give you a shot, but I don’t think that’s what you need. What do you say, Donald, is your dad a nutter?”

Doh just looked from one of us to the other.

“Jim said that a seaplane would be easy to find but we are still searching. He dismissed the possibility of landing in snow, but I have seen an image of parallel lines on snow that could have been made by a seaplane. I have a hunch where Rob may have taken the girls, but I need to talk to Anya. I’m not asking for police resources – well, except for a lift to Loch Dochard.”

Iain continued to look at me for a seemingly interminable time but then he told the pilot that he had a patient to see and to take us to Anya’s home.

“Wow.” Doh exclaimed, his eyes wide with wonder. “Who would have guessed that I had a kick-ass father? Way to go, Dad!”

“I hope you’re not keeping anything from Jim Maitland,” Iain said, after an interval. “That would be a dangerous mistake.”

“I have told the police everything and I have no criticism to make of Jim, but he has dismissed a few little things, probably for the best of reasons; I’ve been adding them up and now I want to talk to Anya.”

“Do you think she has kept something back?”

“I don’t know, but if she has then the only chance of getting her to tell is for me to talk to her. She can’t be coaxed or bullied – she’s faced death when she was nursing in a war zone.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“I saw the citation from the United Nations recording the event.”

There was another prolonged silence before Doctor Iain asked if I could explain my thinking. He told me later that he was still convinced at that stage that I was showing unusual symptoms of the common response of close family to the abduction of a loved one; to put it in the kindest terms, he was certain that my judgement was unreliable because of my grief. He had dealt with many like Jon who collapsed and with the frequent compulsive need to be doing something, as exhibited by Doh; dissatisfaction with the nature and speed of the police response was commonplace. What he had not encountered was someone who had an alternative plan of his own.

My problem was that my mind was already racing ahead to Anya, trying to convince her that she should give me the location of the cave where Rob believed there was a gold mine. Somewhere in my head there was a series of logical steps connecting the kidnapping back to Rob’s obsessive behaviour but, because I was concentrating on convincing Anya, who knew most of the story, I missed a number of vital links when I gave Iain an outline of my thinking.

Instead of sounding rational and logical, I must have come over simply as a father driven half-mad by grief. I was that, of course, but there was more to it that he was unable to perceive. After the dust had settled, he admitted that he let me continue because he judged that my meeting with Anya would be therapeutic for me and would do nothing to impede the vital work of the police. After all, he knew nothing about me, and he had a great deal of experience with the victims of tragedies.

What I failed to realise at the time was that the discussion conducted through headsets because of the noise in the cabin, was heard by the pilot who was, first and foremost, a police officer. A summary of the conversation with Iain was transmitted to Inspector Maitland while the helicopter was on the ground at Loch Dochard. He also had a report from Con Forsyth of my sudden departure from the Retreat. At that time all his attention was focused on the aerial search for the missing seaplane but as time passed without a sighting, Jim Maitland began to consider alternatives, including consideration of the ultimate destination of the kidnapper.

The police had to weigh the balance of probabilities in deciding their actions, not only because it is the most likely path to success but also because they must be conscious of an inquiry into their actions being held long after the events, when logic can be coolly applied. A high court judge who can remain unmoved even in the press of events will have scant sympathy for a police officer acting unwisely in the heat of the moment. The great strength of Jim was that he was constantly adjusting his goals as the probabilities altered during that Christmas Eve.

It should have been relatively simple to spot a seaplane even amongst the large tracts of uninhabited land around the last confirmed sighting. As the day wore on without the large air armada finding Rob’s plane, other consideration came into the picture. It had seemed obvious that the snatch was not planned: Rob could not have anticipated that the girls would be at the end of the jetty at that time.

There were routine profiles prepared of the victims and the perpetrator; Rob had a history of involvement with Anya and Kate, so it was assumed that she was the prime target with Alison being no more than an inconvenient by-stander. When the extent of my recent windfall from the sale of my business became known, the possibility that Ali had been the target was considered.

The greatest problem for the police was the lack of demands by the kidnapper. Rob had taken two girls without preparing for their reception and it would have been logical for him to get rid of them as quickly as possible and certainly before the police discovered his whereabouts. The police thinking was that he would contact someone at about the time he would run out of fuel, to enter into negotiations for the return of the hostages.

As time continued to pass without any sign of the aircraft and without any communication from the abductor, the police became more fearful of the worst-case scenario. It went like this: Rob sees the girls on the jetty and decides impulsively to abduct them; once in the air, he realises the enormity of what he has done; he reasons that he is in serious trouble whatever he does; he resolves not to surrender to the authorities; he flies out to sea and crashes, killing himself and the girls.

Fortunately, when the helicopter landed on the shore of Loch Dochard, I had no suspicion of the police worst case. I believed Anya when she said that Rob would not physically harm Kate and Ali; I would have been a lot less certain if I had known that the seas around Scotland were being scanned for signs of wreckage.

Doctor Iain was first out of the chopper, and he brushed past Anya to go into her cabin. She looked startled but she brightened up when I climbed down followed closely by my son.

“I’m glad to see you Fergus,” she called, while we were still metres apart. “I was thinking that you and me should have a look at the caves.”

I had been preparing and rejecting speeches to convince her to arrive at this very conclusion, so I took her face between my hands and kissed her, warmly on the lips.

“That’s why I’m here. It’s what Rob believes that matters, not whether or not it’s true.”

“Are you kissing that man, Morag?” Aunt Shona squeaked from the door of the cabin.

“Who’s Morag?” I whispered.

“Aunt Shona doesn’t think Anya is a proper name, so she always calls me Morag.”

“No Auntie, he was kissing me.”

She then put both arms round my neck and drew me into a proper kiss with her tongue almost reaching my tonsils.

“That was me kissing a man,” she told her aunt when we had to stop to breathe.

“That’s all right then,” the old lady agreed. “How are you Fergus? The weather’s turning a lot colder.”

“Shona really likes you,” Anya whispered in my ear, baffling me completely since the old woman had treated me like dirt on my first visit.

“Is this something mum would be better not to know?” Doh asked, coming up to where Anya and I still stood embracing.

“If we’re right, your mum will shower both of us with kisses but if we’re wrong, she’ll never speak to either of us again.”

We stood together midway between the shack and the helicopter while Anya and I explained to Doh what we were planning to do. She mentioned that we would need snow suits and various other things to keep us alive as we crossed ten miles of wild moorland during the night; I phoned Hugh, handing the device to Anya when he asked for details of our requirements. I took my son by the arm and led him into the fringe of scrub away from listening ears.